As soldiers saturated the streets of the violence-weary city today, its residents took to the streets for the first time in three days, bringing with them stories of shocking brutality.

"The Uighurs raped a woman in my neighborhood, then threw her body from a second floor balcony and set it on fire," Guo Liang, a Han Chinese woman said as she walked along North Jiefang Street.

"Why do they feel hatred towards us? You tell me," she spat. "They don't respect us at all. You've really got to question why we should tolerate them."

Across town at one of the city's main mosques – a place of worship that had been smashed and sacked by a Han mob yesterday – a man said he saw the bodies of two dead Uighur women who had been slain on the street just a few doors down.

"These were two older Uighur women in their late 60s – beaten to death, right in front of the Agricultural Bank. They used iron bars and sticks," he said. "I saw this with my own eyes."

A crowd of young Uighur men crowded in nodding: a number said they saw it too.

Asked for his name the man refused.

"Are you kidding? No way," he said, then used his right hand to make a slit throat gesture under his chin.

Both accounts were impossible to verify.

Thousands of army reinforcements toting automatic weapons were moved in overnight from neighbouring Qinghai province, reinforcing already substantial numbers of regular, riot and armed police who had flooded the city.

Radio reports said Chinese President Hu Jintao was leaving a G-8 meeting early to fly home from Italy.

And state media was engaged in a full-court press to try to cool emotions.

But the thinking on the street, it seemed, was that there were still scores to settle.

No one was happy with the way things were unfolding: not the Han Chinese, not the Uighurs – not even the minority Kazaks.

Twenty-five year-old firefighter Jiang Umar was stunned and confused.

"I'm a Kazak and Kazaks speak the same sort of Turkic language as the Uighurs. We both believe in Islam. ... And yet, until today I dared not to go out on the streets," he said.

Like most citizens here, he'd been shut up in his apartment for almost three days.

Last night he learned that a young friend of his – also a Kazak – had been slain in a nearby neighbourhood.

He was at a loss to understand such a senseless killing, he said.

The Kazaks and the Uighurs are almost cousins, he said, and yet he no longer feels safe.

As he spoke, a long cavalcade of military trucks drove by in the distance with teams of soldiers chanting "Protect the People!"

In the Uighur quarter surrounding the Han Teng Geli Mosque, young Uighurs recounted how yesterday a throng of Han Chinese men carrying sticks and metal bars rampaged along Jiangnanhou Alley near the mosque, overturning food stalls and smashing every restaurant window in sight.

Shards of broken glass and upended carts still littered the alley.

About 30 restaurants in all appeared to have been smashed.

As a young group of Uighurs repeated their eye-witness accounts of the marauding crowd, a man, who appeared to be Han Chinese, stopped to listen.

After a few minutes he thrust out an accusatory finger at the youths shouting, "Quit trying to inflame ethnic emotions!"

Instantly the crowd moved in on him, led by a middle aged woman, and wild shouting ensued – the man yelling in Chinese, the crowd responding in the Uighurs' Turkic language

Though clearly outnumbered, the man and a few of his friends wouldn't back down.

As the shouting escalated the crowd in the alley suddenly grew larger and some – including this reporter – tried to separate the two sides.

Finally a battalion of soldiers in full battle gear with batons, shields and guns appeared and moved in to disperse the crowd.

Later, one of the Uighur youths complained of continuing surveillance by the state's security forces.

"Whenever three or four of us gather, even on a street corner, they're constantly watching us," he said.

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